By Xu Wei

For a newcomer to China, a night at the Kunqu Opera offers a fascinating insight into the Chinese and what tickles them. Sam Riley went along to the opera "that wants to be liked" and got most of the jokes. Hao! Hao!

Free tickets. Those two magic words that a single hack new to China hoped could provide a light at the end of a dateless tunnel or, at the very least, a bit of company on a work assignment.

The only problem was the tickets were to a Chinese traditional opera and I soon realized that these tickets don't have the same office water cooler cache as a night at Covent Garden or Carnegie Hall.

One less-than-enthusiastic potential companion deadpanned my invitation with "I have to be honest, my grandmother watches it and I know I'll be bored after an hour."

So I was flying solo for my first Chinese opera experience, Shanghai Kunqu Opera House's performance of "Fifteen Strings of Copper Coins."

I approached the Shanghai Oriental Art Center in Pudong with a wary sense of the unknown. Would many people be at this performance? Given its supposed popularity with the grandparent set, would I be the youngest person in the crowd and the only laowai (foreigner)?

On arrival, there was no obvious sign of a mass pensioner gathering - a lane of Century Avenue was not taken up by a procession of elderly wheelchair-pushing opera fans, nor was the cloakroom packed with walking frames.

In fact, Chinese opera seems to be succeeding in attracting a young fan base, if the audience on the night I attended was any indication.

About two-thirds of the people in the packed auditorium were under the age of 30. But from the looks of the offerings from CD sellers at the Oriental Art Center, Kunqu Opera has a way to go before it is a popular music download for Gen Y.

A small selection of Kunqu Opera CDs were facing stiff competition from Janet Jackson and the Backstreet Boys, with Pavarotti proving more popular than his Chinese opera counterparts.

Kunqu Opera dates back around 600 years. UNESCO calls it "a masterpiece of our oral and intangible heritage."

My first impression of Kunqu Opera was that this is an art form that wants to be liked. The bilingual (English and Chinese) program and the subtitles displayed on a large screen on the side of the stage make the action easy to follow.

This is not an art form that is interested in playing to an intellectual inner circle but aims for mass appeal and duly rolls out the welcome mat to audience members not familiar with Kunqu Opera.

The first act, "The Bane" starts in a village setting and is the scene of butcher Yu Hulu's murder by Lou Rat - a gambling, lying swindler who is both the opera's chief villain and its comic heart.

Yu's stepdaughter (Su Xujuan) and a young man (Xiong Youlan), whom she meets while traveling, are wrongly accused of the murder.

The fact that Xiong coincidentally happens to be carrying 15 strings of copper coins, exactly the same amount of money stolen from the crime scene, seals their fate.

With the executioner's axe looming, it is only the wise local governor Kuang Zhong who believes they are innocent and sets out to exonerate the pair.

For a newcomer to Kunqu Opera, it is sometimes hard to grasp the emotional content of the singing. While the bawdy humor and dramatic plot twists keep the belly laughs and suspense flowing, it is hard to feel the tragedy of a man facing the executioner for a crime he did not commit while he is singing of his woes in a high-pitched falsetto voice.

But for someone new to China, a night at the Kunqu Opera offers an interesting insight into the Chinese. With only rudimentary Chinese, one of the hardest things to grasp is what Chinese people find funny. A lot of Kunqu Opera's jokes are slapstick-style physical comedy that is not lost in translation, allowing a non-Chinese speaker to both share the joke and get a sense of what tickles the Chinese.

Shanghai Kunqu Opera House has performed around the world and, as this performance has English subtitles and even a joke in English, every effort is made to share traditional Kunqu Opera with a foreign audience.

The exquisite costumes, athletic performances and superb vocal range of the singers make Kunqu a fascinating spectacle.

As the final curtain fell to a standing ovation and cheers of "hao, hao" ("bravo, bravo") from the audience, it was clear that China's oldest form of opera is gaining a whole new generation of fans.

Kunqu Opera "The Blood Hand Story"

Date: May 24-25, 7:15pm

Kunqu Opera highlights show

Date: May 25, 1:30pm

Venue: Yifu Theater,

701 Fuzhou Rd

Tickets: 30-280 yuan

(Shanghai Daily May 12, 2008)